This is a Recording

Domenico Scarlatti is thought to have composed five hundred and fifty five keyboard sonatas in his time (1685-1757). None quite reach seven minutes' duration, so they're brief pieces - but there are so many. How best to approach this body of work? Some intrepid harpsichordists and pianists have recorded them all, with Scott Ross's complete set the first to be released, in 1988. Wonderful as they can be, I don't know that I'll ever want to try listening to every single one. A less serious alternative would be to try listening to them all at once . For me, the much more appealing option is to trust a performer to put together a judiciously-curated selection. As mentioned before , one of my first ever classical CD purchases was such a set, bringing together eighteen sonatas played by Andreas Staier. I'd picked the disc up having read an endorsement of Scarlatti in a poem: "It is now time to consider how Domenico Scarlatti / condensed so much music into so few ...

My copy of 'Nutbush City Limits' is clearly marked "Promotional / NOT FOR SALE" yet I paid a pound for it about three years ago. So far, I have escaped any adverse consequences for contravening that 49-year-old interdiction; as, to the best of my knowledge, has the charity shop that sold it to me.  It has a stereo mix of the song on one side and a mono one on the other.  On the label is a helpful note for DJs that the introduction takes up  22 seconds of its 2:57 duration. I daresay some of them will have taken the liberty of talking over those crucial seconds, which is too bad, as they set up the body of the song very nicely indeed. This outstandingly satisfying groove then becomes a launch-pad for Tina Turner's precise but powerful vocals. It's a tightly-constructed & forcefully-delivered thing of beauty. The song reached No. 4 in the UK (outsold by the likes of Slade, The Sweet and David Cassidy) and did better still in the German-speaking world. I had ...

Swing may not have altogether still been the thing even in 1956 when this album was recorded. It isn't, in any case, what I look for when I put the record on, but rather tenor saxophonist Jean-Baptiste Illinois Jacquet's way with slow blues & ballads. He plays here as part of a sextet including such notable big band veterans as Jo Jones on drums and Roy Eldridge on trumpet. Jacquet himself had first found fame in the early '40s playing with Lionel Hampton's orchestra. My favourite track is the singularly evocative version of ' Harlem Nocturne ', with the number that follows it ('Can't We Be Friends?' - a mellow ballad dating back to '29) a close second. Not much in evidence (even on the more uptempo numbers) is the "honking" sax style that Jacquet had become associated with, where high harmonics alternate with notes from the bottom of the instrument's range. He had hit upon this style - according to the slightly stilted sleeveno...

Several of my musical discoveries of the '00s were sparked by listening to the Now Hear This! promotional CDs affixed to The Word magazine. The disc that came with the May 2006 issue kicked off with the track 'Diferente' by The Gotan Project, which I enjoyed well enough to place an Amazon order for the trio's album Lunático . I must have clicked carelessly, as I was taken by surprise when a large, flat, square parcel arrived the following week. I'd meant to order it on CD, but instead had procured a 2-LP vinyl copy. That year happened to be when vinyl sales were at their nadir, and, although I had by then acquired a small collection of second-hand LPs, I'd no intention of buying new records, imagining them to be virtually a thing of the past (outside of club culture). Lunático is about an hour long - as was commonplace for albums then - an inconvenient duration for vinyl, so it had been split into four roughly quarter-hour-long sides, necessitating annoying...

This CD is part of a late-'90s series under the collective title Musica Non Grata ("Undesirable Music") featuring pieces drawn from the archives of the Russian Melodiya record label by composers who had variously been "threatened, vilified, reviled and reduced to silence or, at best, grudgingly tolerated" by the Soviet regime. It brings together two of the eight symphonies written by the Armenian composer Alfred "Avet" Terteryan (or Terterian). This wasn't an easy item to find, and I ended up paying £20 for a used copy via ebay earlier this year. Symphony No. 3 (1975) is written for a large symphony orchestra augmented by the duduk and zurna, (traditional Armenian woodwind instruments). It's cast in three movements, and peformed here by the Armenian SSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Khandjan. Terteryan was evidently partial to wide dynamic contrasts, alternating & juxtaposing judderingly loud percussion, strident woodwinds an...

'Being Boiled' was one of the more unlikely hit singles of the early '80s. A song protesting the cruelty of sericulture, it was The Human League's debut single, first issued in 1978. A reworked version appeared on the band's second album Travelogue in 1980, with a re-release of the original 7" (slightly tweaked with added stereo effects) following a few months later. Only in the wake of the League's breakthrough album Dare , did a further re-issue (seemingly identical with the 1980 one) finally achieve success, reaching the respectable heights of number 6 in January '82. Even then, it still sounded forbiddingly futuristic, despite its having been "recorded on a domestic tape recorder, in mono, in an abandoned factory, at a cost of £2.50" (wikipedia). My copy is one of the re-issued variants, very likely the later one. The B-side, 'Circus of Death' is good too, though I'm not sure it really needed the 25-second spoken introduction ...

The centrepiece of Idle Moments is its title-track, as languidly lovely a quarter hour of jazz as one could hope for. The story goes that it was a happy accident, born of a misunderstanding. Having been talked through the piece by its composer (pianist Duke Pearson), Green played his first solo part for sixty-four bars rather than the thirty-two that Pearson had intended. It sounded so good that the rest of the musicians (including Pearson himself, saxophonist Joe Henderson, and Bobby Hutcherson on vibes) followed suit. It left them with a track that was too long, in conjunction with the others they'd already recorded, to shoehorn on to a single LP. After some failed attempts to recapture the magic of that first take in truncated form, they decided to re-do the other pieces instead, arranging the rest of the album around 'Idle Moments'. Although the other tracks are also excellent, it was undoubtedly the right choice. Those who have the CD version of the album can also hea...

At the age of five (ca. 1670), Élisabeth Jacquet, the daughter of an organist and music teacher, and something of a prodigy, was presented to King Louis XIV for whom she played the harpsichord and sang. She evidently made a favourable impression, as she was thereafter granted Royal patronage, and was in the privileged position of being able to dedicate her first published works, a collection of four suites for harpsichord issued in 1687, to the King. By that time she had married, taking the step (unusual in France at the time) of appending her husband's surname to her maiden name. Three of those four suites make up the bulk of this CD. Each suite brings together pieces sharing a common key, beginning with an "unmeasured" prelude, that is, one written without bar lines, with the player at liberty to set their own tempo. The subsequent pieces in each suite are all based on a set sequence of dances deemed proper at the time, beginning with an 'Allemande' and ending w...

A few years too young to properly absorb the impact of punk when it was new, I feel now as if I've aged my way past it to some extent, much more often inclined to reach for the musical equivalent of a pipe & slippers than anything shouty or confrontational. In between, I was very much a fan, more so of the pop-punk side of things (The Ramones, Blondie, Buzzcocks, The Undertones) than of its angrier or more politicised aspects. I first bought Singles Going Steady on cassette when I was twenty-one, and it was already ten years old. At that time it felt like the perfect album. I'd mentioned my erstwhile affection for it to my sister, who subsequently (about five years ago) found a well-worn vinyl copy that she kindly gave to me. It turned out to be a US first pressing. Thrilled as I was to hear it all again, I've not often revisited it. Despite that, I don't think I'll be letting it go in the forseeable future, unlike my copies of Never Mind the Bollocks... and t...

Booker T. Jones & the M.G.'s are captured in seemingly sombre mood on the cover of their 1970 album Melting Pot . Reputedly, by the time this this record was made, both Jones and guitarist Steve Cropper were becoming estranged from Stax records - their musical home for most of the '60s - in the wake of a change of management there. The photo need not, of course, have had any relation to those tensions, but it does help illustrate that all was not well behind the scenes. Happily for the listener, however, it is in no way an "off" or awkward-sounding record: quite the opposite. Made in New York, rather than their native Memphis, the band are on top form throughout. Most of their previous albums had given the impression of being hastily-assembled sets, heavy on the cover-versions, but on this one, all the tracks are original compositions. The very best comes first, in the shape of the 8:15-long title-track, an outstanding groove with Al Jackson, Jr.'s drums its b...

Between his stint as XTC's keyboard player ('78-9) and co-founding Shriekback ('82), Barry Andrews released a solo EP ('Town and Country') and this 7" single ('Rossmore Road'): the latter in 1980; and then again in '81 with a different B-side ('Pages of my Love'). It's the B-side of the first version, however (' Win a Night Out with a Well-Known Paranoiac '), that led me to buy the record. I'd known and loved it from the mid '80s, having heard it a number of times on Anne Nightingale's request show on BBC Radio 1. Where 'Rossmore Road' is a deadpan evocation, with a mellifluous chrous, of the titular London thoroughfare (in Lisson Grove, not far west of Regent's Park); 'Win a Night Out...' is an extravagant six-minute-plus fantasia with an agitated & appropriately paranoid-sounding narration alternating with the track's title repeated as a sung refrain.  The rear of the picture sleeve lists...

The quantity and quality of the sessions that were recorded for Blue Note records but not released until many years after the fact almost beggars belief. One imagines the increasingly adverse commercial climate for jazz as the '60s wore on must have played a significant part in that. Even so, some of their decisions seem baffling in retrospect. Saxophonist Hank Mobley's A Slice of the Top is a prime example: recorded in '66; released in '79. Personally I think it's one of his finest outings, and a better record than those adjacent to it in his discography ( A Caddy for Daddy and Hi Voltage ), both of which were given more timely releases.  A Slice of the Top is unique in Mobley's output for having been written and arranged for an octet. The usual suspects of tenor sax (Mobley); alto sax (James Spaulding); trumpet (Lee Morgan); piano (McCoy Tyner); bass (Bob Cranshaw) and drums (Billy Higgins) were augmented by euphonium (Kiane Zawadi) and tuba (Howard Johnson)...

Why do I have a bulky 12-LP box set of "Light Classical Music" occupying some of my limited shelf-space when I have no intention of listening to the music therein? Sentimental reasons explain it. Visiting my father one day he asked what music I was listening to & I replied that about half of it was classical in some form or another. He'd never acquired any taste for it, he said, whereupon a thought occurred to him and he retrieved this box from another room and handed it to me: it had been his mother's. I didn't imagine I'd end up with a keepsake of my paternal grandmother. It was surprising that anything of hers had survived some rather chaotic episodes in her house in the years following her death. Having said that, it had suffered considerable wear and tear: the box itself was broken, some of the inner sleeves were torn & stained, and one of the discs (no. 4) was in patently unplayable condition. Knowing it had been kept near a coal fire, and not fa...

My favourite album of last year was Fatigue by L'Rain. I can't recall how I first heard about it - did I read a review and then seek it out? Did I catch one of its tracks played on the radio? Had the YouTube algorithm, in its finite wisdom, suggested something from it? I suspect my first introduction to it was on-line, and took place about this time last year. By whatever means I made its acquaintance, I fell under its spell almost immediately. Even so, I hesitated for a short time before buying, as it was not made available on CD. It irked me to spend more on a larger disc when I might otherwise have paid less on a smaller one. I don't think there's any special benefit derived from its being on the older medium - if anything, some tracks (such as the opening 'Fly, Die', which begins with snatches of music - overlain by noises of sirens, gunfire and helicopters - punctuated by brief silences) might have had slightly more impact in digital form. Tightfisted qu...

At an illicit teenage party thrown by my sister while our parents were out, one of her friends, under the influence of a flagon or so of Strongbow, had put his copy of Motörhead's Ace of Spades on to my Dad's turntable and, as close as he could get to the speakers was shout-singing along utterly enthralled by the title track's chorus, meanwhile accompanying himself on air guitar. Two years her junior (I would have been twelve or thirteen), I was under strict instructions to say nothing to anyone about their revelry: an injunction I have respected until now. I'd heard 'Ace of Spades' before, but witnessing that moment I properly felt some of its mind-altering power for the first time, and learned a new respect for it. I don't exactly recall, but this event may have taken place in 1981, the year that "Headgirl's" (i.e. Motörhead's and Girlschool's) collaborative St. Valentines Day Massacre EP was released. Few would argue it's a hig...

A part-smoked Sobranie cigarette with lipstick on the filter tip perched on a fancy ashtray; a single long-stemmed red rose; a bottle of costly-looking booze (cognac?) and a glass poured from it; a cup of coffee and something resembling a half-eaten chocolate truffle; two glasses of Dom Perignon champagne, one of them, again, marked with lipstick; and the open champagne bottle and its cork; a bowl of beluga caviar; a single uneaten prawn; and a pair of high-heeled shoes. Exactly how these these signifiers of affluence and romance relate to the music on Bill Withers' Greatest Hits (1981) isn't obvious, but it is an interesting and eye-catching cover design. I was familiar with the biggest of these hits: 'Just The Two Of Us', 'Ain't No Sunshine', 'Lovely Day' and 'Lean On Me', from radio play back in the '70s and '80s, but at that time these songs, as with most soul music, seemed as if it were a language I didn't quite understand a...

Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov was a Soviet-era Russian composer, probably best-known internationally for his choral and other vocal works: cantatas, oratorios, hymns. etc.. Russians of a certain age will remember him for his piece Time, Forward! part of which was used as the theme for the TV evening news broadcast «Время» . As well as a substantial corpus of choruses, film scores & the like, he also produced some chamber music, which is the focus of the present CD. Sviridov had studied with Shostakovich, nine years his senior, with the older man's influence strongly evident on the pieces included here. Sviridov's 'Piano Trio', written in 1945 and revised ten years later, is, at times, very reminiscent of Shostakovich's 2nd Trio written the year before: such in the piano chords in the agitated Scherzo second movement. Elsewhere (so Iossif Rajskin's booklet notes inform me), Sviridov was more broadly inspired by the Russian tradition of elegaic music for piano ...

There's no way of telling if the photo of Wes Montgomery reproduced on the rear of this LP's sleeve was taken at the Half Note, but he is undoubtedly smoking: a lit cigarette in his mouth as he plays his guitar. The photo of Wynton Kelly looks to have been taken in a recording studio if the out-of-focus reel of tape on his piano is anything to go by. He isn't smoking, but concentrating intently on the keys before him. Both men are wearing white shorts with skinny black ties: Montgomery also in a dark-coloured jacket; Kelly in a cardigan and a beanie-type hat. Only half of Smokin' at the Half Note was recorded in June '65 at the Half Note Club on Hudson Street in New York. The intention must surely have been for it to be entirely a live album, but producer Creed Taylor, presumably dissatisfied, had insisted on some of it being done over a few months later in a studio setting. The two tracks on side A are the live ones; the three on side B those from Rudy Van Gelder...

My first time back at the local charity shop after the long lockdown early last year, I found copies of the self-titled Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure LPs there: "deluxe" 1977 re-presses rather than early '70s originals, but in great condition. The novelty of being in any kind of shop other than a supermarket for the first time in months meant that I gladly paid up the £25 combined asking price, where otherwise I might have baulked. Being a "deluxe" copy means it retains the original issue's gatefold sleeve, with the fantastic photos of the band inside , where each of the five core members pose with a guitar. All of them look fabulous, especially Brian Eno, resplendent in blue eyeshadow, lipstick, an ostrich-feather-trimmed jacket, black flared trousers with silver spiderweb detailing and platform-soled boots. For Your Pleasure was released in March '73: four months later, Eno was out of the group.     My father was a great admirer of Roxy Music, al...

The ten movements of Olivier Messiaen's epic 'Turangalîla Symphony' run to around 80 minutes' duration in all, so it's never going to fit on to a single LP. Here it occupies three sides of vinyl, with a fourth devoted to 'November Steps', a piece by Tōru Takemitsu, apparently given its debut recording on this 1968 RCA release. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra were joined on the former piece by the composer's wife Yvonne Loriod at the piano with her sister Jeanne playing the ondes Martenots. On the latter, Kinshi Tsuruta played the biwa and Katsuya Yokoyama the shakuhachi. Seiji Ozawa conducted. Extensive sleeve-notes written by Messiaen himself (translated by Louis Biancolli) explain the work's origins in an obsession with the story of Tristan and Isolde; its varied symbolism; its title (derived from two Sanskrit words); its overarching theme as being a "song of love, a hymn to joy" (of the mystical & transcendent sorts); its complex rhyt...

Richard Dawson can look like a folk singer: one bearded man with an acoustic guitar, albeit an amplified one, and can sometimes sound like a bit like one too. His playing, though, owes as much to avant-garde free improvisation as it does to traditional fingerpicking & strumming, while the subject-matter of his fascinating lyrics can incorporate historical events, mundane contemporary references, and the surreal or fantastical. The overall effect is a singular one, and not readily categorisable. I first heard him in late 2014, when his song 'The Vile Stuff'' (drawn from his fourth album Nothing Important ) was played on BBC 6 Music. Not completely sold, but curious, I looked on-line and found a  YouTube clip of him performing 'Black Dog in the Sky' - and that reeled me in. This song formed part of a 2011 album The Magic Bridge , which, conveniently, was re-issued in 2015 as interest in his music grew. I ordered a CD copy of it.  'Black Dog in the Sky' co...

This 2006 box set's full title is simply a list of the six pieces contained within: Asrael | A Summer's Tale | The Ripening | Epilogue | Fairy Tale | Praga - these being the major orchestral works of the Czech violinist and composer Josef Suk (1874-1935). The performances collected here date from between 1985-89, and feature the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, with Václav Neumann conducting 'Asrael', 'The Ripening' and 'Epilogue', and Libor Pešek at the podium for the other three works. On 'Epilogue', the Prague Philharmonic Choir and three solo singers can also be heard. I'd first heard Suk's music on a Naxos CD I bought ca. 2001 on which 'A Summer's Tale' was the stand-out. I especially loved its second and third movements. Seeking to explore further, I acquired an album including both 'Asrael' and 'Fairy Tale', where it was the latter piece that particularly appealed to me. His later works like 'The Ripe...

Only twice have I stumbled upon Miles Davis LPs in charity shop record bins: on one occasion I found an '80s re-press of Sketches of Spain , and on another, during a trip to Newport, I found this 1960 UK mono pressing of Miles Davis' Lift to the Scaffold/Jazz Track . This album had been released the year before in the US, where it had been simply, if generically, titled Jazz Track . Before that, the music on side A, recorded in Paris in late 1957 as a soundtrack to Louis Malle's film Ascenseur pour l'échafaud , had been issued in Europe on a 10" album. The three pieces on side B were recorded in New York in '58, and first saw the light of day on Jazz Track . On the ten short soundtrack cues, Davis was joined by Barney Wilen (tenor sax), René Urtreger (piano), Pierre Michelot (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums). The personnel on side B are the same sextet as famously can be heard on (most of) Kind of Blue , that is, with Bill Evans rather than Wynton Kelly on piano....

Remarkably extensive though it is, the Discogs database doesn't contain everything, with its coverage of classical releases patchier than that of rock, pop & jazz ones. Had I continued to rely on the 'Random Item' button there, then I wouldn't have been in a position to write about this 2-CD Anniversary Edition album which brings together notable performances of half a dozen works by the Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke: as far as I can tell, no-one has added it there yet*. The album was released in 2020 on the Russian Melodiya label, intended to mark what would have been the composer's 85th birthday (but a year late for that). It's a handsome package with a very informative booklet in an unusual double-digipak which folds out into an L-shape. I bought it when it came out, being particularly interested to get a recording of his 'Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra' (1979), which I'd been listening to via YouTube. It's represented here by...

Some 'Best Of' compilations are meticulously-curated labours of love; others are lazy cash-grabs. This  The Very Best Of The Lovin' Spoonful CD released in 1998 is nearer the latter end of that continuum than the former. There are some (uncredited) liner notes, but they're on the perfunctory side; the track-listing and credits contain a few errors; and the handful of photographs are unimpressive. Nevertheless, the music itself (26 tracks of it in all) remains strong enough for it to be worth the while: I must have owned it for at least 15 years and it still gets played every now & then. I only knew 'Summer in the City' and maybe one or two of their other songs before I bought a similar compilation on cassette in '89 or '90. I was greatly impressed to discover a round dozen or more classic pop-rock numbers therein and very little in the way of filler. Between '65 and '68. John Sebastian turned out one winning melody after another: 'Daydre...

Used reggae records are few and far between in this particular corner of South Wales. I can't even recall the last time I saw a copy of Bob Marley's Legend hereabouts. That goes some way towards explaining why I only own a grand total of three reggae LPs: two by Black Uhuru and this one, Changes , by The Mighty Diamonds. I'd long imagined my copy, which has 'MADE IN JAMAICA' printed on the rear of the sleeve, to be an import; but, on closer inspection, I now think it's the 1982 UK re-press. To be fair, the two variants are very similar. It's a very enjoyable album with strong songwriting throughout (with six of the ten tracks written by one or more of the Diamonds), and is one of many benefitting from the presence of Sly Dunbar on the drums, and Robbie Shakespeare on bass. As one might expect from a group that originated as a vocal harmony trio, the singing is first rate too. Oddly, the record has never been issued on CD. I was half-familiar with the open...

I knew and loved The Only Ones' 'Another Girl, Another Planet' when I was in my late teens, but wasn't aware of the band's catalogue beyond their best-known song. At some point during my university years I took a chance on a cassette copy of their Peel Sessions Album , then newly-released. At first hearing I wasn't sure I liked the session version of 'Another Girl...' as much as the single version; but subsequent listens changed my mind, and I grew to love many of the other tracks too. When, at length, I found a cassette copy of the band's third album Baby's Got a Gun , I was disappointed by it: I did not care for the production on it at all. I later tried again with their compilation The Immortal Story , but again, found I liked it much less than the Peel Sessions , which, as one Discogs commenter pithily put it, is "like a 'best of' but with even better versions of all their best songs". I let the matter rest there, but then t...

Imagine my delight on finding a copy of The Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis Cookbook Vol. 3 at a local emporium a couple of months back, and with a '60s U.S. Prestige Records label on it too - the first one of those I've seen hereabouts. Last year I'd acquired Vols. 1 & 2 of the same series, albeit in the form of a '74 2xLP re-issue, and ordered via Discogs. This copy of Vol. 3 has quite an advanced case of shelf-wear, but the sturdy mono disc within still plays very well. I first heard of the "cookbook" sessions ca. 2014 and had obtained a download version of them then. Apparently the origins of Davis' unusual nickname are lost in the mists of time. He earned a reputation as a "tough tenor" but he was just as adept on mellow bluesy numbers and in ballads, with many of the "Cookbook" tracks showcasing his tender side to great effect. He plays here in a quintet, with co-star Shirley Scott at the organ (one of the very few female in...

This LP comes with a fold-out poster on which there are instructions on how to "Build Your Own Pop-Up Construction to Hold your Music Tapes Recording" (namely the CD you're encouraged to make of the downloadable versions of the songs), with part of the poster itself intended to be cut out and used in said Construction. The list of additional supplies the would-be hobbyist will need is: "one small acorn; a warm iron; scissors; a piece of stiff paper; glue". Among the instuctions is: "Draw a tiny musical note on your acorn". It's so very twee, as, to some extent, is the music, but it's also decidedly weird. Tweird , perhaps. My belated discovery of the "Elephant 6" artists' work about fifteen years ago did not extend to The Music Tapes. Only last year did I happen to stray into their eccentric world. Music Tapes For Clouds And Tornadoes is unusual with respect to both its instrumentation and recording. The musical saw and the banjo...

Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky is a pianist, composer and conductor originally from Russia and now resident in Switzerland. His compositions are characterised by a kind of minimalism that's neither quite like the styles of Glass & Reich nor the so-called "Holy Minimalists" among his Soviet-born contemporaries. To me his music seems distantly reminiscent of some of Michael Nyman's work. It makes use of repeated fragments of melody drawn from the classical and popular traditions, and often calls for amplified instrumentation. I first encountered his work on a CD called Pourquoi Je Suis Si Sentimental , as mentioned in passing here . Pura Cosa Mentale is a 2-CD album on the Belgian label Megadisc including five of his works. The first disc is dominated by a lengthy piece called 'Six États Intermediaires' which, a note adds, is "based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead". Its an orchestral opus, with, as its title implies, six movements. Notwithstandi...

Jarvis Cocker and the various incarnations of Pulp famously spent years toiling in the shadows before emerging triumphantly into the spotlight in the early-to-mid '90s. I don't exactly recall, but suspect it would have been around the time the 'Lipgloss' single came out that I first became aware of them. I never did buy their His 'n' Hers album, but was good & ready to spend money on Different Class after falling for 'Common People' when it appeared in '95. I initially bought it on cassette but upgraded a couple of years later to the "Deluxe Edition" on CD, which, as well as the album proper, includes another disc ( Second Class ) featuring a collection of B-sides released between '93 and '95. So inspired were the band during this period that it's a very strong compilation in its own right, beginning with 'Mile End' which later formed part of the Trainspotting soundtrack, and ending with 'Street Lites' whi...